We have no reason to expect the quality of intuition to improve with the importance of the problem. Perhaps the contrary: high-stake problems are likely to involve powerful emotions and strong impulses to action.

An individual who expresses high confidence probably has a good story, which may or may not be true.

We are often confident even when we are wrong, and an objective observer is more likely to detect our errors than we are.

Survival prospects are poor for an animal that is not suspicious of novelty.

Most people are highly optimistic most of the time.

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.

However, optimism is highly valued, socially and in the market; people and firms reward the providers of dangerously misleading information more than they reward truth tellers. One of the lessons of the financial crisis that led to the Great Recession is that there are periods in which competition, among experts and among organizations, creates powerful forces that favor a collective blindness to risk and uncertainty.